LONDON — Labour may be at near-historic lows in the polls but Jeremy Corbyn’s inner circle is clinging stubbornly to the hope of an upset election win, inspired by other “outsiders” like Bernie Sanders and now Emmanuel Macron.

According to a senior party official familiar with the leadership team’s electoral strategy, while Labour MPs are looking over their shoulders in seats once considered unassailable, Corbyn and his close aides believe a grass-roots insurgency can succeed against the well-oiled Conservative election machine.

They believe the success of the Brexiteers, Donald Trump, Macron — and to a lesser degree French leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon — shows the nature of political campaigning has fundamentally changed.

“Campaigning like this is something we are actually good at and we know what we are doing,” said one Labour official. “We have lots of experienced people and the gap between us and the Tories in this area is really quite large.”

While many in the party feel the best Labour can achieve is damage limitation, the campaign’s leaders are determined they can turn the tide and win seats with an anti-elites campaign straight out of the populist playbook.

The polls haven’t moved in Labour’s favor since May called the snap election last week. If anything, they’ve gotten worse.

“Labour will be fighting for every seat and every vote in this general election,” the party’s national election chair, Andrew Gwynne MP, told POLITICO. “This is the chance for a fresh start with a Labour government. The choice couldn’t be clearer: between a Labour Party who will stand up for the many, and a Conservative Party which only looks after the privileged few.”

Corbyn, front and center

The gloom among MPs is not permeating the top team, who will complete their move to campaign HQ at Labour’s Southside head office, half a mile from the Palace of Westminster, by the end of this week.

The campaign chairs Gwynne and fellow MP Ian Lavery will be joined by key staff from the leader’s office, who are set to call the shots over the next six weeks.

Seumas Milne, Corbyn’s official spokesman and former Guardian columnist, is leading on communications and strategy. Alongside him at the head of the operation is Karie Murphy, executive director of Corbyn’s office, who will be the campaign’s day-to-day manager. MP John Trickett will represent the leader inside HQ on the frequent occasions Corbyn himself is out on the stump.

There is “no Lynton Crosby figure,” the official familiar with the party’s strategy said, referring to the veteran political strategist who has been hired by the Tories. The Labour campaign team, which was until recently under the experienced hand of party staffer Simon Fletcher, was centralized earlier this year and is now under the control of the Milne/Murphy axis.

Seumas Milne watches as Jeremy Corbyn gives a television interview outside the houses of parliament in London | Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

Policy chief Andrew Fisher is drafting the manifesto, with input from members of the shadow cabinet. It will go before a committee of party MPs and officials — known as the “Clause V committee” by the leader’s office in reference to the party’s constitution which sets out how policy is made — in the coming days to be ratified before publication, the official said.

The leader may not poll well, but his team are determined to put him front and center.

“He has already done 14 events to Theresa May’s four,” said an official. Many key meetings in HQ will be conducted with Corbyn chipping in by conference call.

Corbyn has been in a state of almost perpetual campaigning — twice for the leadership, and in the EU referendum — since the 2015 election, and is happiest on the stump, the official said. His team hopes that the same grass-roots enthusiasm, demonstrated in barnstormer rallies reminiscent of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in two successful leadership campaigns, will catch on nationwide.

Asked whether the strategy amounted to “damage limitation,” given the state of the polls, the official pointed to locations Corbyn has visited during the campaign so far — such as Crewe, Cardiff, Swindon and Bristol — where there are Tory seats the party thinks they can win, and Scotland, where the SNP dominates.

“Campaigning has changed, you can’t rule out the outsider at the outset,” the official said, pointing to Macron and Mélenchon’s first and fourth positions in the first round of France’s presidential contest.

Unified message?

Caught between the two-thirds of its voters that backed Remain in the EU referendum, and the third that backed Leave, Labour is hoping to move the debate away from Brexit.

Campaign HQ will be tolerant of local campaigns striking varying tones on the issue: supportive of a soft Brexit in Remain areas, clear that “Brexit means Brexit” in Leave areas. In Stoke Central, a heavily Leave area, Labour campaign material adopted an unabashedly patriotic tone during the recent by-election, emphasizing border control and immigration, and the party clung on.

“They know they are really staring down the barrel” — Former Tory cabinet minister

The head of that campaign, Birmingham MP Jack Dromey, has called on the party to learn the lessons of Stoke. They have been noted, the official close to Corbyn said.

However the party also has a national message that the election is “not just about Brexit, it’s the people versus the powerful,” the official said.

There is a grid of campaign announcements planned. So far the party has put forward a number of measures that fit within the theme of “the people” — four extra bank holidays, a £10-an-hour minimum wage, a pay rise for NHS staff. Future campaign briefings will turn the spotlight on “the powerful” — what the official described as “the nexus of tax cheats, press barons and Tories.”

Labour supporters wait for the arrival of Britain’s opposition Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn for a campaign meeting in Harlow Town Park, Essex, north of London on April 27, 2017 | Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

Time to say goodbye?

The polls haven’t moved in Labour’s favor since May called the snap election last week. If anything, they’ve gotten worse.

Another, an MP with a majority over 14,000, said: “It would be a dark day in hell if Labour lost my seat. But you can’t take anything for granted now.”

A range of factors — the popularity of May and her message of “strong and stable” leadership through the Brexit process, concern about Corbyn’s leadership qualities, the return of UKIP voters to the Tories, and the modest revival of the Liberal Democrats — are conspiring against Labour.

Corbyn playing with a stethoscope at a campaign event in London | Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

That Corbyn is not seen as an electoral asset is now openly accepted by many MPs. On Monday, Matthew Pennycook, a highly rated Labour frontbencher, was contacted on Twitter by a constituent who said he wanted to vote for him but couldn’t support Corbyn. “It will only be my name on the ballot paper,” was Pennycook’s public reply.

Labour’s political enemies can hardly disguise their glee. “They are very depressed,” said one former Tory cabinet minister. “Five or six of them have come up to me already to say their goodbyes. They know they are really staring down the barrel.”

Related stories on these topics:

Jim Hassinger

Here’s the thing about Sanders: he didn’t win, not by a long shot. He was crushed by Hillary by the time the campaigns to exist. He was beaten like a pillow in the spring. That’s when he decided to go negative, once he had no way to win.

Adam Myers

Campaign management and tactics are irrelevant if your candidate is duff and you have no credible policies; in 1987 the Labour Party ran the best campaign, but still got buried and in 2015 they had wayy more acitivists on the streets and again, they lost.

The problem Labour is that they took the wrong lesson from the defeat in 2015. All the evidence from the TUC, Lord Ashcroft, the Fabians and the Labour Party itself said that they lost because they had no credible economic policy and a weak leader. Rather than engage with this, Labour has ‘doubled down’ on both of these and are now looking at getting wiped out. You can’t argue with the electorate…

Posted on 4/28/17 | 11:42 AM CEST

Adam

Bernie Sanders didn’t win the Democratic nomination but at least he had a personality and a certain presence that Corbyn simply doesn’t have. Corbyn is an exceptionally dull man holding exceptionally out of date ideas. His biggest sin is he’s been leader of the Labour party for what seems like forever and he has spent the majority of that time fighting the Labour party and precisely zero time fighting against Brexit or opposing the government as he is supposed to be doing. Perhaps if he had campaigned like he was supposed to there wouldn’t even be a Brexit like now. It would be Cameron suffering from the in-fighting not Labour.

So he’s going to lose and lose hard. The idiots in Momentum will probably blame the Labour party for their defeat, that somehow it will be other parliamentarians and the rank and file’s fault for not getting behind Corbyn. The reality is that Corbyn and Momentum pulled off this unmitigated disaster all by their lonesome. They paid their £3 to vote this nonentity in and the entire country has suffered for it.

Posted on 4/28/17 | 2:21 PM CEST

YellowSubmarine

Many voters have already made up their minds, Conservative and brexit voters could have voted when the election was announced and they will not switch from backing May over the next few weeks.

The lib Dems have pinned all on the remain voters swinging behind them yet after nine months their ratings have not moved.

Labour voters are deciding if they will bother voting for Corbyn or not. I suspect many will stay at home on polling day, like labour voters tend to do anyhow.

The SNP’s well piloted little boat has just spotted the tsunami heading towards it and will likley be Sturgeon less if not rudderless after its encounter.

Posted on 4/28/17 | 7:09 PM CEST

trisul

Corbyn’s team believe no such thing, they just want an excuse to stay on. They will lose, they know it, and they want to keep their positions after losing. This requires bravado, which is what they are developing.

As to the fate of the British worker … who cares? Certainly not team Corbyn, otherwise he would not be supporting Brexit and its projected 30% drop in wages over the next 20 years.

Posted on 4/28/17 | 9:48 PM CEST

Bernard

It’s a shame that the UK has no real opposition party worthy of the term. Labour still clings to its moronic and inept leader, Corbyn. SNP is only a regional party and the LibDems are polling in the middle-of-nowhere. Theresa May and her Conservative have a hassle free ‘reign’ for years to come. It was quite an ingenious move by Theresa May to call for an early election.

Posted on 4/29/17 | 8:40 AM CEST

Derek

. Inside the security of your filter bubble you can tell yourself all is possible. As long as there are a dozen of so sharing the same bubble you can talk up your chances. Confirmation Bias to the rescue!

Posted on 4/29/17 | 8:47 AM CEST

Fubar Saunders

“Jeremy Corbyn’s inner circle is clinging stubbornly to the hope of an upset election win, inspired by other “outsiders” like Bernie Sanders and now Emmanuel Macron.”

Sanders didnt win anything. He got lots of publicity amongst the naive, the dreamers, the snowflakes, but in reality, all he won was being bought off by Clinton to get out of the way. If thats what Corbyn’s team consider to be a marker of success, then thats…. interesting.

“According to a senior party official familiar with the leadership team’s electoral strategy, while Labour MPs are looking over their shoulders in seats once considered unassailable, Corbyn and his close aides believe a grass-roots insurgency can succeed against the well-oiled Conservative election machine.”

It can if you have something to sell that the voting public can relate to and that you can articulate with clarity and passion. However, these are things that Labour and Corbyn in particular do not have.

“They believe the success of the Brexiteers, Donald Trump, Macron — and to a lesser degree French leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon — shows the nature of political campaigning has fundamentally changed.”

Arguably so. But, your vision must be one that is clear, lucid, passionate and one that the proles can buy into. All that is on sale on the Corbyn stand is that they hate Tories. Whoop de doo. We all do that, but thats not enough for me to vote for an IRA supporting advocate of Mugabenomics to be Chancellor of the world’s 6th largest economy or for a two faced racist like Dianne Abbott to be Home Secretary. Never in a month of Sundays. You’ve got to give us more than that.

Posted on 4/29/17 | 1:05 PM CEST

Giani

I am confident Corbyn will win the election, given that he has hired such internationally recognised experts as the former Greek minister Gianis Varoufakis, who was so successful at saving Greece from its debt troubles and so popular with his European counterparts, who unanimously recognised his genius in the field of Economics and rushed to adopt all his proposals… With help such as that, Corbyn’s bid for a seat on Fordwich’s town council should be a breeze!

Posted on 4/29/17 | 6:50 PM CEST

Dee

As an ex Labour Party member I can confirm that I and everyone I know or even people I do not know but have spoken to about this are going to vote for Teresa May. People do not trust Jeremy Corbyn or his team with the security of the country or the economy. No one knows the Labour position on Brexit so I cannot comment on it, however I consider him and his Shadow Cabinet totally incompetent so cannot trust their to negotiate the UK’s exit from the EU.

Posted on 4/29/17 | 6:50 PM CEST

Gareth Cooke

Giani

I can’t stop laughing an excellent essay

Dee

He has single handed destroyed a once great part and the other aspect that is so labour unlike the tory or libs dems who can remove their leaders Corbyn is like a leader of a one-party state and all this because Margaret Beckett said a left winger was needed stand for labour leadership on ballot and everyone thinking he never stand a chance of winning am sure Beckett regrets nominating him know

Posted on 4/29/17 | 10:34 PM CEST

Ludovica

I am not British so the choice is not mine to make. But I wouldn’t doubt for a second, and surely vote for Corbyn’s Labour Party.

Posted on 4/29/17 | 10:44 PM CEST

John Stevens

Lol. Still to come is the exposure of the lie that giving Mrs May a big majority will give her mystical powers at the Brexit negotiating table. It won’t , the EU have their position and won’t be changing it. Then we have the reality bites message. giving Mrs may a majority will not cut any ice with Merkel and co but it would mean the Tories have sway over the UK population, they will raise taxes, cut benefits and privatise the NHS by stealth. And they don’t seriously deny it. Corbyn will not win an outright majority but he will do enough to secure a hung parliament.

Posted on 5/1/17 | 10:20 PM CEST

Ashe Ren

Firstly, the polls HAVE changed considerably and quite amazingly fast, with the Tories now only leading by 11 points this week, and it’s still falling rapidly. Secondly useing the word “gotten” worse gives away that the person who wrote this article is American, as no English or European educated person would use such a word. The correct phrase is “got” worse, and it is not only bad grammar, it is also a blatant lie.

Posted on 5/2/17 | 9:45 AM CEST

Gareth Cooke

John Stevens

It will give May a stable government and the idiot EU comic opera nagotions team headed by the french manic legend in his own mind cant blackmail the UK may be you would per fer to go and live in the EU empire than UK if you do good luck old man

Posted on 5/3/17 | 4:18 AM CEST

Rosie Brocklehurst

Reading this for first time. ! Well you got that amazingly wrong, thank goodness. Ridiculous Politico.